EVERYDAY PRAYER

The Divine Office  (Short version) Everyday Prayer

The Breviary also called liturgy of the hours, liturgical book in the Roman Catholic Church that contains the daily service for the divine office, the official prayer of the church consisting of psalms, readings, and hymns that are recited at stated hours of the day. The breviary (Latin breviarium, “abridgment”) as a condensed tome appeared only after the divine office itself was fixed and widely used and after the recitation of the office had come to be regarded as obligatory for religious individuals not residing in a community.

The form and content of the divine office were fixed in the Roman rite by the 7th century and in Carolingian Europe by the 10th; the office was celebrated by communities in solemn form requiring many ministers using several books. The congregation recited its parts from memory. The first breviaries, which appeared in the 11th century, were choir books containing the whole office in one book. After the appearance in the 13th century of the mendicant orders—religious orders whose work, primarily itinerant preaching and teaching, often did not allow them to reside in common—the need for portable breviaries arose. After Innocent III (pope, 1198–1216) approved a shortened form of the office for his Curia, the book was adopted, with modifications, by the rapidly expanding Franciscan order and became known and ultimately accepted throughout Europe.Book of hours, devotional book widely popular in the later Middle Ages. The book of hours began to appear in the 13th century, containing prayers to be said at the canonical hours in honour of the Virgin Mary. The growing demand for smaller such books for family and individual use created a prayerbook style enormously popular among the wealthy. The demand for the books was crucial to the development of Gothic illumination. These lavishly decorated texts, of small dimensions, varied in content according to their patrons’ desires.

Today they are more common among Seminarians  and Religous Orders.